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Saturday.
A day reserved for parties, dinners with friends, strolling the sidewalks with arms linked together and wine coursing through veins, hailing taxis with no avail.
Saturdays were light, fun, fearless.
For others, maybe.
Never for Hyungseo.
Saturday nights meant lighting candles all across his apartment, trying to breathe with the flickering flames. It meant jumping up from the couch whenever he heard the slightest noise outside his door. Saturday nights equated to feeling like his chest was going to explode, to his hands clammy and erupting into tremors every so often.
Saturday nights meant fear.
It wasn’t always like this. He used to be the first one to call up his friends, to bug Joonyoung to climb out from his watery livings and cruise the city with him. He would wrangle the ever elusive vampires, Younghoon and Changmin, from their dimly lit home and encourage them to take just one more shot.
He would spread his wings as he would swing and sway to the horrible beat some deadbeat DJ would play through the loudspeakers. When the mood would hit him right, the fellow club goers would be delicately speckled with the star like magic that fell from his fingertips.
Club owners were never very privy to allowing fairies into their establishments.
They left a mess.
A mess that Hyungseo could see even now. Even when he felt like he was shrouded in darkness. It wasn’t the same glowing light he was used to. These stars were dim, falling from his skin like meteors crashing to Earth.
Hyungseo had been lucky to live his life so freely for so many years. Everyone knew what went on below the city streets.
When Hyungseo and his friends would be seated around a table, shouting at each other and sending playful shoves against each other’s skin, the sewers told a different story.
One that he’d grown all too familiar with.
When Hyungseo met Sangyeon, it was a cloudy night not unlike the one he was gazing out at right now.
He had, miserably, been the one designated to watch over their friends after a particularly rough week. His sober mind gave freedom to them to be as reckless as they wished.
Hyungeso was walking with, or rather, holding up Joonyoung as the ever slippery siren was attempting to walk on both feet. The sounds of bubbly laughter and slurred speech were escaping his lips, Hyungseo unable to understand any of it.
The lightness quickly shifted to darkness when a heavy weight collided with Hyungseo’s shoulder, sending Joonyoung to the ground. The crew behind them, Chanhee, Changmin, and Sunwoo, were of no help and simply erupted into laughter, holding themselves up against the brick wall of the building they were passing.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” The hidden figure mumbled out, bending over to help Joonyoung up.
Hyungeso was about to speak, brush it off and chalk it up to the poorly lit street, but something stopped him. Something deep red and pooling around the strangers knuckles.
“Hey, are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
He reached out to touch the broken skin but it was quickly torn away from him, Joonyoung practically thrown into his arms.
“I’m fine. Sorry again.”
Hyungseo was never one to let things go. No fairy ever was. Something always blossomed inside of them, every single one of them, whenever they sensed another creature in distress. They were natural born caregivers, lovers, fixers.
“You’re not fine.” Hyungeso handed off his friend to Sunwoo, who barely caught him, and grabbed the man’s sleeve, “I can help you.”
Hyungseo didn’t make a noise when he was face to face with the figure, only clenched his fists by his sides and tucked his wings tightly against his back.
The laughter in the background cut off as quickly as a record taken off the spinner, even the air that surrounded them shifted into something different. Something darker.
“I said I’m fine. ” The final word came from the back of his throat, sharp teeth threatening Hyungseo in a way he had never known.
“Let’s go.” Changmin was the first of them to speak up, touching Hyungseo’s arm with a gentle hand.
But Hyungseo didn’t go.
He wasn’t like his friends.
He never listened to the stories that were whispered amongst kinfolk and creatures alike.
He knew this man wouldn’t hurt him.
Because his voice and fangs and protruding claws told a story of anger and strength, but his eyes told a different one.
Hyungseo was not the one who was afraid here.
The werewolf was.
Hyungseo swallowed the lump in his throat and with a hand that was glowing golden, ghosted his fingertips over the open wounds on the wolf’s face, “I can help you.”
Amber eyes darted around the group of friends, clearly scanning for any signs of danger, and reason to fight again, before landing back on Hyungseo. He was enamored with them immediately, feeling like he was flying without ever fluttering his wings.
Unlike vampires, whose eyes glowed a haunting red, the wolf’s danced and swirled with deep yellows and oranges, rivaling the glow of Hyungseo’s own magic skin.
“Fairies never know when to let things go, do they?”
He still hadn’t let go.
Because the wolf followed him home, well after he’d let Joonyoung float away into his pond and the others nestled into their homes, after Hyungseo spent nearly fifteen minutes convincing the other to come inside and another ten just to get a name from him.
Sangyeon.
Sangyeon, with his shifting eyes and tight muscles every time Hyungseo touched him.
Hyungseo didn’t get much more than a name from him. He only learned that he shared a living space of some sort with three other wolves and acted as a leader of sorts. That, Hyungseo supposed at the time, is why he was sitting in his kitchen chair, blood dripping on the floor and flesh ripped apart.
Werewolves weren’t like the other creatures. Even the blood sucking ones. Hyungseo never understood that, truly. They could all be killers. He’d seen Joonyoung at his worst moments, when anger would take over his body and usually friendly blue scales that lined his skin turned razor sharp, cutting through even the toughest materials as though it were fragile silk.
He’d seen the dragonborns and the reign of fires they could create if one were to wrong them.
So why, he asked as he silently tended to Sangyeon, did the wolves have to fight?
They made their money, got their food, catered their lives in the underground. Hyungseo had never been, would never go, but everyone knew about its existence. Sick creatures that spent their days as family men, business owners, friendly faces that Hyungseo would pass by on the street everyday, would bet their money on wolves in cages, tied up like feral dogs, to witness them fight.
Hyungseo didn’t know if it ended in death.
The pieces of something he told himself was dirt under Sangyeon’s nails told him that it might.
After the last bandage was laid, Sangyeon was quick to rise and head towards the door, uttering thank you’s upon thank you’s and, what seemed to be a pattern, endless apologies.
In a moment of bravery, latching onto the desperate look in Sangyeon’s eyes, Hyungseo spoke just as quickly, “You don’t have to go.”
Sangyeon paused, his hand frozen on the doorknob, before glancing back at the fairy, “I can’t see you again.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how it will end.”
It wasn’t a threat of teeth sinking into his skin, ripping his flesh apart from his muscles. He knew that after weeks of waiting by that same spot, after seeing Sangyeon again five times and begging him to just stay. Just talk to him.
It was a threat of his heart.
Because with each encounter, Sangyeon’s muscles relaxed. His eyes grew less afraid and more fond, more tender. But his touches were fleeting, his words still few.
It took Hyungseo a month to get Sangyeon to join him for a cup of coffee.
Two to be able to touch him again.
Three for Hyungseo to realize that his feelings towards Sangyeon weren’t just out of curiosity. Were far more than just a reaching friendship.
He came to this realization on a Thursday night. When he met Sangyeon’s family.
An excitable boy opened up the door to the decrepit apartment, all smiles and a hug and a very loud, “Oh wow! I’m sorry I hugged you so tightly. Your wings probably hurt.”
Youngjae became someone very familiar to Hyungseo. Never leaving his side the entire night and asking all about what life was like for faefolk. Hyungseo was happy to tell him, enjoying the way he never let his tail disappear, watching with warm eyes as it would wag excitedly with each new story.
Juyeon and Jaehyun kept a safe distance for the most part, laughing along when Youngjae would and eyeing Sangyeon from time to time. It was easy to see that they all looked to him, and relied on his queues.
Each wolf had scars. A deep purple bruise had blossomed across Juyeon’s right cheek and Jaehyun’s arms were scattered with cuts. But Youngjae’s skin was clear, his nails were clean and his aura showed no signs of someone who had fought death just to have a meal on his table.
Sangyeon didn’t answer Hyungseo’s questions about this.
Not until a year later.
When they started to wake up next to each other. When Sangyeon touched him like he wasn’t afraid anymore. Their conversations would flow easily over breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. Hyungseo had the pleasure of hearing Sangyeon laugh, really laugh, and it would be music to his ears every single time.
They never really spoke about it.
Things just happened the way that do from time to time, Hyungseo supposed.
He really always imagined his falling in love story would be something grand, with a confession that made the sky seem like it was erupting with fireworks and music playing in his mind. But then again, that didn’t really seem like Sangyeon’s style.
His style was more…
His clothes littering Hyungseo’s apartment and him being upset when Hyungseo would be late to meet him after a fight. More kissing him for the first time when he was in the middle of a story about Changmin and Chanhee getting into an embarrassing fight at the grocery store.
More letting Hyungseo bandage him up as they sat on the couch, chest to chest as Hyungseo straddled his lap and peppered each wound with a kiss afterwards.
“Youngjae doesn’t fight.” Sangyeon had spoken into the dark room, the two of them staring up at Hyungseo’s starlit ceiling, “I won’t allow him to. He’s too young.”
“What about when he gets older?” Hyungseo prodded, turning over to face Sangyeon and taking advantage of the honest moment.
“No.” It was stern, gruff, like the Sangyeon he remembered meeting, “He won’t. He’s not like me. He’s not a killer.”
It was Hyungseo who was rendered silent that time. The one who kept his mouth shut for a long time. What was he to say?
He still wasn’t sure.
All he could do was bring his body closer to the ever warm one of Sangyeon’s, hold him in his arms to remind him that there would always be something, always someone, to come home to.
That home that he still sat in. On this Saturday night.
Hyungseo didn’t meet Sangyeon on the street after his fights during winter. Sangyeon had scolded him too many times about waiting in the cold and the one time he got sick was enough to send the wolf into a worried tail spin.
It was rather cute, Hyungseo remembered and smiled to himself, seeing Sangyeon fret over him like that.
He’d tried a few things to distract him since this change. Since now he had to wait in solitude at his home. Movies didn’t work and there never seemed to be anything good on television. He couldn’t really invite a friend over to keep him company, Sangyeon never wanted any of them to see him like that.
Not again.
Hyungseo knew they didn’t care. Sometimes it seemed they were more worried than he was. It was Younghoon who would always ask about Sangyeon, Joonyoung the one to text him every hour and see if everything was okay.
But he respected Sangyeon enough to keep these moments between them. He himself had started to prefer it that way as well.
These days, he found himself in the company of nothing but silence and candles. He’d bought almost thirty in the last few weeks. Sangyeon had to build him a little bookcase structure in his living room just to have a place for all of them to rest.
Watching the flames flicker and dance helped him breathe, kept him grounded.
Reminded him that he was still alive.
That Sangyeon would come back to him alive.
With a tight exhale out, Hyungseo’s already heightened senses kicked into overdrive when the door opened and Sangyeon stepped in.
“Oh, thank god.” He whispered to himself as he stood up and rushed to greet him. Never a tight hug or jumping into the strong arms he’d grown to call home, as badly as he wanted to. Sangyeon’s body could never handle that.
“Hey.”
“Take your hood off.” Hyungseo tried to peer at Sangyeon’s face, the wolf able to dodge each glance, “Sangyeon. Come on. Please. ”
There was nothing he hadn’t seen. No sight that he couldn’t handle. Sometimes, the marks that were left on his lover’s skin would make his stomach drop and his heart race, but he would tend them all the same.
Silently or loudly, as sometimes Sangyeon just needed to hear him talk.
“It’s bad this time.”
His voice was hoarse, like he was straining his throat too hard and Hyungseo held in a gasp or cry or whatever noise his body was threatening to make as Sangyeon looked at him.
He was being generous.
It wasn’t bad.
It was horrible.
Blood was caked around his left eye, his lid swollen shut and already the deepest purple Hyungseo had ever seen. On his right cheek, a deep gash followed all the way down his face and neck, disappearing under the collar of his ripped shirt. Countless other injuries waged war across his body, too many to even begin to count.
“Please don’t cry.” Sangyeon reached up to hold Hyungseo’s face with a feather light hand, the same kind of touch that he’d felt when they first met. Scared.
He was scared of Hyungseo. Of what he might do. Of seeing his back as it walked out the door and never came back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He leaned into the touch and spoke the words with all he had, desperate to give Sangyeon any type of reassurance, “I’m just happy you came home.”
“It was different this time.” Sangyeon let his hand down and Hyungseo set to work, first removing his jacket before guiding him to the couch, “It was worse.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. You know that.”
Hyungseo was surprised by the small laugh that escaped his bruised lips, ignoring how bloodied his usually brilliant white sharp teeth were, “It’s more like a matter of whether you want to hear it or not.”
He gathered all his usual supplies from the cabinet he’d long since dedicated to Sangyeon’s needs, and then some, before rejoining him on the couch. Hyungseo avoided their usual close and intimate contact, seeing the way Sangyeon was wincing with each breath he took.
“You can always tell me, no matter how gruesome it might be. This might sting.”
He said it every time, he wasn’t sure why. Sangyeon knew what was coming and hissed with each press of the medicine soaked bandages. Maybe it was for his own sanity. He wasn’t hurting Sangyeon. He was helping him. Fixing him.
“He was just a kid.” Sangyeon spoke after a few moments of silence, Hyungseo glancing at the wolf’s eyes. They were watering, tears daring to spill out, but the wolf was always too stubborn to let them fall.
But like everything about this night, this was different.
As soon as one rolled down his cheek, it was like they couldn’t be stopped. Sangyeon’s body shook from the force, Hyungseo nearly throwing everything off of his lap just to get his arms around him as quickly as he possibly could.
“I didn’t want to hurt him.” Sangyeon grasped at Hyungseo’s arm tightly, sure to leave a bruise that he would pain himself over later, “I really didn’t.”
“I know. I know you didn’t.”
“I tried to tell them. I begged them to find someone else.” Sangyeon leaned his head back, like he was looking to the sky, maybe searching for an answer, “But they just laughed at me. They said... They said if I didn’t then they would find him.”
Hyungseo moved a hand up to brush the hair out of Sangyeon’s face, resting it on the man’s cheek and using his thumb to wipe away the free falling tears. He moved his body impossibly closer, trying to keep Sangyeon here. In the present. Safe and alive.
“It’s okay. Take a deep breath. Find who?”
Sangyeon finally looked at him, riddled with heartbreak and pain stealing the light from his eyes, “Youngjae. If I didn’t win the fight, they would’ve come for him. I had to, Hyungseo. I had to do it.”
The harsh reality wasn’t something that Hyungseo liked to face often. Even on these nights, when he’d be tending to scratches and bites and bruises, he’d try and make light of it. Tell jokes or put on a humorous movie for them to watch. Make tea and wrap the wolf up in blankets, kissing him in the moonlight and reminding him how loved he really was.
He would push the light from his skin and cover them in a golden glow. Erupt childish giggles from Sangyeon as he would pepper his face with sparkles and fallen stars.
But now, times like this, it hit him harder than any wolf ever could.
Just what Sangyeon had to do to keep his family safe. The horrors he had to witness. Had to commit. With his own hands.
But this wasn’t about him. It never was.
He swallowed thickly and found his footing, his grounding, before taking Sangyeon’s face in both his hands and pressing their foreheads together, “You’re not a monster, okay? You’re not. You did the right thing for him. You always do. He’s safe everyday because of you. Say it, please. Say it with me. You’re not a monster.”
Sangyeon tried to speak but the only thing that filled the air was another broken sob. Hyungseo didn’t let it go. He remembered that night. Sangyeon’s words.
Fairies never knew how to let anything go.
He wasn’t going to lose Sangyeon to this.
“Say it. Take all the time you need to let this out but you have to say it.”
He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours. But eventually Sangyeon stopped crying, let the pain of years of clawing his way to safety out, and he closed the distance between them.
A kiss that felt different from any of the millions they’d shared before.
“I’m not a monster.”
It was a whisper for just the two of them. A phrase for no one else.
Hyungseo found a smile, finally, and kissed Sangyeon again. And again. And again.
They seemed to open their eyes at the same time, the glow of Hyungseo’s skin bouncing off of Sangyeon’s and with caution and as delicately as he could, Hyungseo rubbed his nose against Sangyeon’s just three times, “There he is. There’s my boy.”
“Thank you.”
It meant a lot more. It meant for everything. Hyungseo knew that.
“I love you, you know? And I always will.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine why.” Sangyeon laughed, real and full of life, “But I’m endlessly thankful. I love you too.”
The air was finally lighter around them and Hyungseo got back to his tasks, Sangyeon melting into the couch and everything about him seeming to shift after letting his heart finally fully show everything that was dwelling inside of it.
After the last bandage found itself nestled on Sangyeon’s chest, Hyungseo clicked his tongue, “Wait a minute. What do you mean you can’t imagine why? Of course I love you!”
Sangyeon rolled his eyes at this, his still swollen one struggling to keep up but meaning all the same, “Don’t start with that.”
“I’m serious! Why wouldn’t I love you?”
He lifted his hand and gestured over his entire body, Hyungseo watching with furrowed eyebrows, “Really?”
Hyungseo huffed and cleaned up the supplies, shuffling back into the kitchen with fake offense lacing every action and expression. He was starting a fake fight, the only ones they ever really had. One of the few things that got Sangyeon into a playful mood after terrible nights.
“Come on! Don’t be upset!” Sangyeon shouted from the couch.
Hyungseo smiled to himself for a moment as the cabinet door closed and he turned to face the wolf .
The fighter.
The protector.
The leader.
The love of his life.
“You know, us fairies never know when to let things go.”